Dover: Race winner interview

MARK MARTIN
-6-Scotts Ford F-150 (Finished 1st)
"Well, I think we were a little bit disappointed with how we qualified,
but we knew that in practice we had truck for the long hauls. Lucky
for us, there was a lot of green-flag racing. The guys...

MARK MARTIN
-6-Scotts Ford F-150 (Finished 1st)

"Well, I think we were a little bit disappointed with how we qualified,
but we knew that in practice we had truck for the long hauls. Lucky
for us, there was a lot of green-flag racing. The guys did a great job
preparing it and especially pitting it and keeping me in the front once
we got to the front. It was one of those days where everything worked
out for you. Like I say, we expected based on experience, I had the
track to come to us, and it came to us pretty well. We only made one
adjustment and that was on the last pit stop."

HOW MUCH FUN WOULD IT BE TO HAVE CARL EDWARDS IN THE NO. 50 FORD EVERY
RACE AS A TEAMMATE?

"As long as we're in first place, I'm having a ball.
To be honest with you, it's just a lot of fun. In my opinion, the truck
series is the best racing in NASCAR right now. It's a lot of fun. It's
full of great drivers, and the vehicles are a lot of fun to race. Carl
would certainly keep me on my toes if he would have been anywhere near,
so I tried to make sure I was in a different zip code if I could be."

YOU NOW HAVE A WIN HERE IN ALL THREE NASCAR SERIES. IS THERE A SPECIAL
SIGNIFICANCE TO GETTING THE THIRD WIN?

"That's for you guys, I don't
keep score. That's for you guys to keep. That sounds good, so don't
forget about it. Talk about it because I'll forget. The focus is now
on Sunday. To go to bed with the ways things turned out, I'm really
grateful to my fans who have been incredibly supportive. To the people
that have their hands on that Scotts truck, the engine folks, as well as
the fabricators and pit crew and everybody else, thank you for letting
me drive your stuff, but the focus is now on Sunday and everything else
is history. This is behind us."

DID YOU CONSIDER STAYING OUT ON THE LAST CAUTION?

"At that caution, I
think we would have made it and it would have been fine, but I'm leaving
all of that stuff up to Mike Beam. I think everybody was going to come
so it would comfortably put them in the window, especially in the case
of a green-white-checkered finish. I think pretty much everybody planned
on coming for that one."

"Kyle was really fast, especially on the shorter runs. I really couldn't
do anything with him on a short run. Our strong suit was long runs.
Had it gone green all the way, I told our guys that I thought I could
beat him at the end of a 90-lap run, but that's yet to be seen. He was
incredibly fast, but he was really fast on new tires. I couldn't quite
run with him on new tires there for a little while. He's real fast in
that truck."